Fulvia

I love the creativity of writing- what a great idea to share some of these hidden talents!

I call it "Morning Mist March" In a land of misty vales far to the north where trickles of water dripped from cool, jagged rocks down onto lazy moss to the song of morning sparrows, there was a time when the moon would shine off dark rivers, and thick trees reached high their lofty leaves with wild abandon. Hills were long and rolled with wild ponies, sunlight crept into the world in translucent streams creating a mosaic of color upon the forest floor. To the west lay the undefiled waters of eternity; this was protection and this was life. It was the only boundary. Though it rained often the rocky crests spoke loudly- They spoke of harsh love and stubborn pride. Warriors of untamable spirits stalking about the land of mystics: The mind of the wolf and the body of the bear. All life told a story. All stories were alive. From deep within the still valley The sun rose. Swirling mists were chased away as a fire’s smoke is waved aside. With each great swirl the mist became thinner and thinner, A scene was slowly revealed lessening the blow: sacred oak and precious alder murdered. It was an end… And they sparkled of iron and gold and of bloody red.

That is a fascinating site- thanks!!! I haven't touched too much British history since high school but my teacher's love for it embedded itself a bit in my soul.

Horrible Histories should be ressurected. The videos I found entertaining, the animation was especially entertaining. As a video to wet someone's appetitite and leave a few tidbits behind I would vote for them. Something to play in "Your First Roman Course" class or the like.

So I've start a blog on which I try to put something up of some quality every few weeks or so. It's a combination of history and creative writing and since I love trolling these boards reading all the great conversations that go on in here, I want to know if any of you have blogs (outside of the UNRV provided ones) that you either are fans of, or, are of your own. So the selfless promotion part goes here: https://ampitheaterwords.wordpress.com/ and then the more interesting part for me of reading some good and interesting stuff goes right beneath me.

You do know that you don't make public things said in pm's unless given permission, right?

So glad I saw this post poking its head out- I too seriously froze from shock thinking Go Daddy was putting the sight up for bid or something!

The information you never knew you wanted to know. A hairstylist/ amateur experimental archaeologist has, what she claimed, successfully recreated the hair style of the Vestal Virgins, and also of many brides, the sine crines. Since hair styles were so important to social status, social function and even religious duties, it is quite interesting to see this style put forward as a very likely candidate to in fact reveal a detail of religious duty that would have been vitally important to the Romans. Unlike other hair styles which very obviously have fads that can be easily followed, ie. conservative hair styles from the Republic vs. the Flavian hair, it would appear that the Vestal Virgin's own style changed little to none over the years. A testament to the need for religious purity as seen through the hair styles perhaps? The article and demonstrative video for your viewing pleasure: Unveiling the Sine Crines

Allow me throw this out as well since my current side reading has been increasing my questions! So I will toss my current dilemmas out and maybe inspire some other people's thoughts. A number of years ago I once heard a lecture given to a general knowledge audience introducing them to the Tullianum mostly through a physical description. One of the descriptions he gave was the tendency for the spring beneath the carcer to flood backing up the water from the cloaca maxima, with which it is joined, into the Tullianum filling the room with sewage laced water. He seemed to insinuate that these gross waters rose high in the Tullianum and tended to stay for a long time. Not too sure on that part since he gave no evidence. Having originated as a water well of sorts, being filled with water makes sense but not when there are high profile prisoners literally rotting away in stinky water. While I am aware of the bad habit the Forum Romanum had of flooding, to anyone more familiar with the cloaca maxima itself and the flooding problems of ancient Rome, do you have anything you could add that would prove or disprove this description? There is also the question of how the executed bodies of prisoners were disposed. Jack Finegan in his book, "The Archaeology of the New Testament" says that the bodies were tossed through a door into the cloaca maxima though rather unhelpfully tells nothing about what led him to say that or where this door is. I have been inside the Tullianum in Rome, so unless that little water-spring hole in the floor used to be bigger, there is no way a body could currently fit through it. But then it would have to be gated so a prisoner wouldn't just jump in and escape "Shawshank Redemption" style! So, a bit more helpfully, Donald G. Kyle in "Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome" says instead that executed prisoners were displayed on the Gemini Stairs (presumably the high profile prisoners) and then tossed into the Tiber after three days. Perhaps both methods were used, perhaps even others, but again, no source was given for what led Kyle to make such a statement. And finally,(for this round anyway, lol)I have read a few sources that have hypothesized, insisted even, that Rome itself must have had more than one prison, their logic being simply that a city the size of Rome could not be properly serviced by just the Tullianum. The only source given to support this belief comes from Juvenal's Satire 3 where he laments the days when only one prison (carcer) was enough to satisfy the needs of Rome. But I can't find any further evidence of these prisons? Thoughts?

My initial understanding was much of the same- exile or physical punishment and the prison as holding cells. But I first began to think it as being otherwise when I ran into these two points: First, that Rome had an alternative to these options with an in-city forced labor camp essentially: Livy also references the Lautumiae when he talks about a successful revolt of Carthaginian POWs in 198. There were too many of them to all be in the Tullianum and revolt. This suggests to me that the word "carcer" is interchangable with the Tullianum and other penal facilities. This then suggests to me that the Romans had more than just death and exile as options for punishment. From this thought process, it wouldn't take much to see a melding of the two types of prisons, from one being just a holding cell to something more. Edward Peters in his "Prison before the Prison: The Ancient and Medieval Worlds," made notes this( my paraphrase):

Please forgive me if this topic has been discussed before; some of you are like local librarians who know every thread ever made! (That'd be a compliment :)/>) Rome's Carcer, or "prison" as it often gets misleadingly referred to in English, has been a small fascination for me but I have been having some difficulties pinning down it's use as differentiated in the Republic and the Empire. There must have been a shift in its use from the Republican era (a place to await execution), to something more since in the 4th century AD there had to be some rules put in place and interventions used due to abuses happening in the Carcer; what these rules were, I can't say for sure. Between it's original set-up design and this one book-end piece of knowledge for the late Empire it seems to me that its use, or the extent of its use, changed as Rome's influence spread.Or maybe it just became a lazy way to deal with someone with whom, "I'll just deal with later", much like paperwork stuffed to the side of your desk you couldn't be bothered with until you have to. Can anyone shed some light on the evolution of the Carcer specifically contrasting the Republic vs. Empire?

Hailing from East Canada I can say with confidence that there is nothing wrong with the way you speak English! I loved those short little videos- good job. This past summer I also was in Italy and rented a bike to ride down the Via Appia for a few miles and could not help but imagine the gory sight that Crassus had left there. It's something else to see over just reading it.

The love of learning? The proof is in the pudding, as they say

In Goldworthy's book about Julius Caesar, he descirbes a scene where Caesar found out that his wife was having an affair. DId he take out out on the street and have her stoned to death? No, he simply divorced her. That may have just been Caesar who was remarkably conciliatory in many situations where others would let their passions get the better of them. Typically a young male Roman would regard being in love as something akin to emotional slavery, a very undesrable state of affairs, and the expectations of young men were even more macho and lustful than our present day. I would be interested in knowing for what era this observation pertains to knowing how much attitudes changed from era to era. Was this as much true in the middle empire as it was, say for example, in the late Republic? Would it be fair to categorize the "sexual revolution" of the early principate as a break in this attitude of not wanting to be chained down? Or would this be another example of the Romans' famous double standards with attitudes vs. actions?

That explains everything about my family tree now!!